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Sillyness, Now and Then
When Khaled approached me, asking for some help with exporting his blog content, which would eventually become Broken Kode Season 1, we spoke a little about blogs, blooks and what moving your prose from this medium of immediacy and interaction, to a more traditional, non participatory one meant.
I also confided in him that I was thinking along these same lines as well (publishing some or all of my posts here on Sillyness as a book through LuLu), I just wasn’t ready yet. One reason that I wasn’t ready to undertake this large task was that I had no idea what I wanted out of a dead tree version of Sillyness.
Way to go MS and Universal
So yeah, I have heard the news that Redmond will be paying a “percentage” of profits generated from the sales of the Zune to Universal Music Group, to “offset the revenue lost due to music piracy”.
What kind of morons are in charge over there now anyway? I have read all the arguments… and I just don’t buy that Microsoft can afford to lose that kind of money just to de-throne Apple’s iPod.
At some point that war chest will run dry, and then what do you do?
On the bright side we now have been given carte blanche to download music from the internet illegally… if you own a Zune that is. Thanks for picking up the tab for the little man Microsoft. And what leg will the RIAA have to stand on if a Zune owner is sued for illegally downloading music? The argument is that the industry is losing money, well now they are being compensated… do the lawsuits stop?
I think we should all go out and by Zunes, right now and find out. What do you think?
Live Redesign Underway
And I mean live.
Expect so much broken-ness and unstyli-ness that it might make you want to smack your mamma. Seriously.
I love live redesigns, but usually I try to have most things done before I go live with a new theme… I thought this time it would be fun to let everyone follow along as I discover how this layout ends.
Fear not, if inspiration leaves me, or I get to busy to focus on the site in the next few days I will go back to one of my other themes; but I think this will be an interesting experience.
CJD Notepad 2.0 rc1
Yes folks, if you use my notepad plugin there is a reason to rejoice.
I have been prepping this plugin for release for the past 3 weeks. There is some code cleanup, but most notably I have added note integration on the Write Posts page. Below the image uploader you should now see a ‘Notes’ area. If you click the ‘Use for this post’ text some javascriptiness will add the text of that note to the edit area. It should work when using the Rich Text Editor, and when not.
Leave any comments or bug reports here in the comments. Go and get it!
NOC in a Crate
From Sun.
This is quite possibly the Greatest Thing Ever (TM). Paul, can I have one of these to power the website?
Back from Austin
And man am I tired.
This ApacheCon was probably the busiest for me. Between hacking on the secret project, and attending talks I barely had anytime to hang out with the extremely cool people that were there. Austin was an extremely cool place.
I will write a proper entry on this once I have recovered, but for now I leave you with this very important question:
Why in the world did the water in Austin taste like moldy dirt?
Pictures and more witty banter to come.
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Slideshow Pro with PHP, CSS and JS
Well not exactly, but close enough to warrant the title I would think.
I know that I was supposed to publish another tutorial before this one, but I hacked this up last week, and thought it was cool enough to preempt the other post. So at work the new design we just launched called for a rotating, hyperlinked slideshow, with cross-fading.
Normally it would be “To the Flash Cave!”, but I was feeling extra crotchety so I decided to basically recreate Slideshow Pro in PHP, CSS and some JS-foo. Nothing to spectacular, but it is shiny. Be warned, this is a very long tutorial… use at your own risk. Read the rest »
The upside of being early
So the upside of arriving someplace early is that sometimes, just sometimes, you are awarded with wonderful suprises.
I just had one of those times. It seems that the man, the myth, Ken Coar arrived early as well. I bumped into him on the elevator as I was going to find some grub. He decided to accompany me and chat for a bit. It was a wonderful, geeky time. I respect and admire Ken a great deal so having time with him in a more intimate setting was a real treat.
Oh, and I have decided to try and have an official, impromptu gathering of blogger-type people at Austin Java Company on Tuesday night, around 8:00 I should think. Nothing to formal, I would just like to sit and chat with some local blogger types if I could.
I have chosen this location since it has A.) free wifi, and B.) is like 3 minutes from the Hilton where I am staying. If someone out there can offer a better location that meets my two requirements, then by all means suggest it.
Off to Austin
I have arrived here in Austin and have checked into my hotel. Other than the hotel not having any record of a reservation in my name for today, things have been pretty smooth. Well it looks like doing something out tonite is a bust, since I am feeling pretty crappy from the flight out here. Maybe tomorrow night when more people I know are actually here.
I am sitting here once again at Gate 3 at Bluegrass Airport wating to be whisked away to ApacheCon.
In a comical twist of fate, I am going to be arriving in Austin a day early for the conference… everyone else will be arriving tomorrow (Sunday). So if there are any WordPressers in the greater Austin Area who wold like to get together and have some coffee or something, I would be up for it.
I will be staying in the new Hilton Austin downtown, so if you want to hang out, you can give me a call there, or comment here. I wouldn’t mind getting together in the evening sometime this coming week as well. The Good Dr. will be at ApacheCon as well… and I might be able to convince him to come out for a bit as well.
Pro WordPress Development
For any of you who signed up to be updated as to the release date of this book, ignore the emails from Amazon you are getting.
The publisher and I parted ways months ago, and there is no book to buy. I have the 11 of 12 chapters I wrote, and I hope to one day have it published; either through another tech publisher or something like LuLu.
Again, if you get an email saying my book is to be released on the 16th, ignore it.
My thanks to Shawn for bringing this to my attention.
Onward to Ohio Linuxfest
The rag-tag group of techy types from Wilmore have arrived (at least in part) in Columbus, and are readying themselves for the fun and penguins to be had tomorrow at Ohio Linuxfest!
I for one am very excited about this conference. I first attended 2 years ago, and it was one of the best conference experiences I have had… Apachecon in Germany not withstanding. If you are planning on being there tomorrow, find me and say what up, if you are not planning on being there tomorrow, then mark your calendar for next year; it is well worth your time.
Gotta go now, time for bed.